Week 8 — The Weeks You Don’t Post About: Sub-3 on 3 Runs:

Week 8 was a battle.

One of those weeks where, if I’m honest, I felt pretty crap from start to finish.

It began on Tuesday. The plan was simple: get the run done. Instead, the day unravelled. Life admin, interruptions, pressure, poor headspace, one of those days where nothing quite lands and you’re already behind before you’ve started. The run didn’t happen as planned, and that tone lingered.

The rest of the week felt much the same.

There was no buzz. No flow. No “this is coming together.” Just a sense of dragging the week along behind me and trying not to let it collapse entirely.

Midweek I managed to insert the first proper bit of intensity on the bike for months 12 x 25 seconds at a high output. Short, sharp, anaerobic efforts designed to wake the legs up without taking too much away from the running. And actually, that session was good. It felt honest. The legs got a proper bash-out. Heart rate up, breathing sharp, no overthinking. Just turn the pedals hard & hold on.

The only other riding was a solid 90-minute aerobic session, upper Zone 2, steady pressure. Keeps the aerobic base ticking over.

But overall? It was a tough week mentally.

Marathon training has a particular cruelty to it. There’s always a voice in the background saying, “You just have to get on with it.” Because the event doesn’t care if your week’s been messy. The calendar doesn’t pause. And when you’re trying to do something slightly left-field, like aiming to run sub-3 off three runs per week, there’s even less margin for fluff.

Even just getting round a marathon half-decently on three runs a week is demanding when the week goes sideways. So you either sulk about it, or you give yourself a quiet kick and do what you can.

This week was about doing what I could.

The long run salvaged things just about.

I tagged into a social run, good company, good chat, easy pace for the first hour. That helped. Sometimes you need people more than splits. After that, I pushed on and ended up digging out 18 miles in total, with around 10 miles sitting around three-hour pace.

It did not feel good.

It felt hard. Honest hard. The kind of hard where you’re questioning your life choices at mile 15 and reminding yourself why you started this project in the first place. But it got done.

And sometimes that’s the win.

Not every long run needs to feel smooth. Not every marathon-pace effort needs to feel controlled. There’s value in discomfort. There’s value in remembering that this distance is demanding and that fatigue resistance isn’t built in easy weeks.

I also used the long run as a bit of a gear experiment. I wore my new Li-Ning shoes, an AliExpress try-out, no carbon plates, nothing flashy. And honestly? For an 18-mile run they held up really well. Solid pretty comfortable ride. Will do some deeper testing with them and maybe a little review comparing them to some super shoes.

One area that did go well this week was strength training.

Three gym sessions. Two decent plyometric blocks alongside more general upper and lower body work. And, if anything, that’s the part I’ve actually enjoyed most recently. There’s something satisfying about structured, measurable strength work when the running feels messy. It gives you an anchor point. It reinforces that even when the legs feel flat on the road, you’re still building something underneath.

Week 8 didn’t feel like progress.
It felt like survival.

But survival weeks matter.

They test whether the structure holds when motivation dips. They expose whether the project is built on enthusiasm or discipline. And they remind you that not every block is linear.

Onto next week.

Be less sh#t.

Si